The Jura Arc

How watchmaking reached the mountains

The trade came up from Geneva. By the end of the seventeenth century, the Historical Dictionary of Switzerland says, Geneva’s watchmakers did only the finishing and bought their movement blanks from the Jura valleys, while the craftsmen of the Vallée de Joux specialised in complicated mechanisms; by the twentieth century more than 90 per cent of the Swiss watch workforce was in the Jura Arc.¹

From the eighteenth century the Swiss Jura turned from farming to watchmaking. The trade spread through the Neuchâtel mountains, where La Chaux-de-Fonds and Le Locle grew into watch towns, into the Saint-Imier valley, whose watch-parts workshops date from the 1720s, and in the nineteenth century to Biel/Bienne and Grenchen at the foot of the mountains.^{1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7}

Homes, workshops and factories

For a long time the work was done at home. Outworkers made the parts, and an établisseur collected, assembled and sold the watches; Longines began this way in Saint-Imier in 1832. La Chaux-de-Fonds and Le Locle, replanned after fires in the early nineteenth century, were laid out in parallel strips where housing and workshops sat side by side, and UNESCO inscribed them together as a World Heritage Site in 2009.^1, 3, 12

Factories came late in the century. Longines opened its factory at Saint-Imier in 1867 and the workshops of the town gave way to factory work. The Historical Dictionary describes this as the answer to cheap American factory watches, which nearly ruined Swiss exports in the 1870s; by 1883 almost half the watch factories under federal factory law were in the canton of Bern.^1, 5, 12

The region’s makers now

The Vallée de Joux, a high valley in the canton of Vaud, holds the workshops of Blancpain at Le Brassus and Le Sentier, Breguet at L’Abbaye and L’Orient, and Jaeger-LeCoultre. Saint-Imier is still the home of Longines.^{5, 15, 16, 17}

Biel/Bienne, at the eastern end of the arc, holds the head office of the Swatch Group, in the former ASUAG building, and is the home of Omega, which came from La Chaux-de-Fonds in 1880, and of Swatch. The group’s movement maker ETA works at Grenchen nearby, with production sites in the foothills of the Jura and in Valais and Ticino.^{6, 19, 20, 21, 22}

The region paid heavily for the electronic watch, and Saint-Imier, dependent on one industry, was hit hard in the 1930s and again in the 1970s. Counts of the jobs lost differ: from about 70,000 in the mid-1960s to 30,000–35,000 in the 1980s by one count, from 90,000 in 1970 to 28,000 in 1988 by another.^1, 5, 23

Where the Jura Arc leads

• Based here · , CompanyBlancpain

  Blancpain began in Villeret in the Bernese Jura and has worked in the Vallée de Joux since the 1980s.^16, 24

• Based here · , CompanyBreguet

  Breguet has made its watches in the Vallée de Joux since 1976 and has its head office at L’Abbaye.^17, 32

• Based here · , CompanyJaeger-LeCoultre

  Jaeger-LeCoultre grew out of a family forge in Le Sentier and still makes its components in the Vallée de Joux.^{26, 27, 30}

• Based here · , CompanyLongines

  Longines has worked in Saint-Imier since 1832, and in its factory there since 1867.^5, 12

• Based here · , CompanyOmega

  Omega began in La Chaux-de-Fonds in 1848 and has been in Biel/Bienne since 1880.^20, 28

• Based here · , CompanySwatch

  Swatch is run from Biel/Bienne and its watches are made by ETA in Grenchen.²¹

• Based here · , CompanyZenith

  The Historical Dictionary of Switzerland records Zenith at Le Locle, in the Neuchâtel mountains.³⁵

• In this story · , PlaceGrenchen

  A watch town at the south foot of the Jura, at the eastern end of the arc.^1, 36

• In this story · , PlaceVallée de Joux

  The Historical Dictionary of Switzerland describes the valley as lying in the Vaud Jura.³⁷

• Part of · , HistorySwitzerland’s network of specialists

  The mountains that took up watchmaking from the 17th century, free of Geneva’s guilds.^1, 38

• See also · , HistoryAmerica industrializes the watch

  Watkins records that the Intercantonal Society of Jura Industries sent Jacques David to study the American factories in 1876.³⁹

• See also · , CompanyRolex

  Where Rolex’s movements came from: Biel, and later a site in Le Locle.^{33, 40, 41}

• See also · , CompanyTudor

  The watchmaking region where Tudor now assembles every watch, in Le Locle.³³

• See also · , PersonAbraham-Louis Breguet

  Exile in Geneva, Neuchâtel and Le Locle, 1793-95.^42, 43

• See also · , PersonFerdinand Berthoud

  Born and trained in the Val-de-Travers, Principality of Neuchâtel.^44, 45

• See also · , PlaceBesançon

  The industry was founded by Swiss watchmakers from Le Locle and Neuchâtel and depended on Swiss parts and competition across the border.^46, 47

• See also · , PlaceGeneva

  The valleys that made the movements Geneva’s workshops finished, and the Biel works that supplied Rolex.^1, 41

• See also · , PlaceSchaffhausen

  Heinrich Moser trained in Le Locle and made his watches there from 1829 before building the Rhine dam at home.^48, 49

• See also · , PlaceThe Black Forest

  The Deutsches Uhrenmuseum notes that the Furtwangen school tried and failed to build up pocket-watch making on the Swiss Jura model.⁵⁰

• See also · , TechnologyÉtablissage

  In La Chaux-de-Fonds the industry took this form from the early 18th century.^38, 51

• See also · , GroupThe Swatch Group

  The group’s head office is in Biel/Bienne and its movement maker ETA is at Grenchen, both at the foot of the Jura.^{19, 21, 22}

• See also · , EventThe Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition

  The Société that sent David was founded by firms of the Jura watch region, according to the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry.^39, 52

• See also · , EventThe quartz crisis

  The Swiss watchmaking region the Historical Dictionary of Switzerland describes as stricken by the quartz years.¹

• See also · , EventThe Swiss watch cartel and statute

  The Federal Council described the watch measures as a defence of regional interests, because the industry was concentrated in the cantons of the west and north-west.⁵³